DIRECTOR OF SANTED, 2000-2005
Committed teacher, educationalist and outstanding academic citizen

For everyone involved in SANTED funded projects in institutions throughout South Africa and in some SADC countries, the name of Derrick Young was synonymous with SANTED. He was its driving force and everyone he met was inspired by his commitment and energy. Derrick was seconded by the University of the Witwatersrand to direct the South African—Norway Tertiary Education Development programme (SANTED) in 2000. SANTED had come about through an agreement between the South African Department of Education and the Norwegian government and is housed at the Centre for Education Policy Development (CEPD). The original five year programme, directed by Derrick, consisted of various institutional projects designed to contribute to the restructuring and transformation of higher education in South Africa by improving student access and retention rates, building capacity, and increasing co-operation among higher education institutions in SADC. That original programme had almost come to an end at the time of Derrick’s death and he was already preparing for the second phase, together with the Department of Education and the Norwegian Embassy. A review of the achievements of the first phase published days after Derrick’s death, gave a glowing account of his contribution to the programme. On the 15th of September 2005, on a long lonely road between Swakopmund and Windhoek, Derrick and Deborah McConnell, the SANTED project co-ordinator at Wits, were killed in a motor car accident while visiting, with others, a SADC co-operation project in Namibia.

Son of Don and Margaret Young, Derrick was born in Springs in 1950. In 1968 he registered at Wits for a BSc Degree in Applied Mathematics and was awarded a Transvaal Teachers’ Scholarship. After completing his degree, he went on to do a Transvaal Higher Teaching Diploma (THTD) and later a Masters degree in Education. In 1973 he started his high school teaching career which included a period at King Edward High School as well as in Peterborough in the United Kingdom. In 1979 he was appointed to the department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Sciences at Wits University He was a passionate teacher and played a central role in the department including initiating a number of innovative teaching activities.

In addition to his life-long commitment to teaching, Derrick developed a deep interest in education policy and higher education policies in particular. Initially this led to a growing interest in the working conditions of academic staff. In 1986 he was elected president of the Academic Staff Association (ASA). Through his involvement in the ASA Derrick was drawn into the broader challenges facing higher education in South Africa. In the early eighties he became active in the Concerned Academics for Democracy (CADS), a pressure group initiated by David Webster and designed to encourage academics at Wits to become more involved in the growing movement for democracy in South Africa. In 1988 he was a founder member of the Union of Democratic University Staff Associations (UDUSA), a national association of progressive academics designed to give support to universities facing state repression and more broadly to advance the transformation of our universities. Derrick was elected treasurer of UDUSA and was to play a central role in this exciting initiative including a visit by a nation-wide delegation of UDUSA members to the African National Congress in Lusaka in 1989.

Derrick’s reputation as an authority on higher education, as well as his particular knowledge of information technology (IT), led to his appointment as an advisor to the National Commission on Higher Education in 1996 where he wrote many of the recommendations on IT. He had also been an active member of the National Education Policy Initiative (NEPI), a think tank designed to advise the ANC and its allies on education policy in post-apartheid South Africa. Derrick was also a ministerial appointee to the Council of the Vaal University of Technology (formerly the Vaal Technikon) for eight years.

When Cohn Bundy was appointed Vice-Chancellor in 1998, he appointed Derrick as his special advisor for six months. During this time Derrick was to write the proposal for funding for a large-scale mentoring project, Growing Our Own Timber (GOOT). Increasingly Derrick was drawn into high level policy advice by the Department of Education, especially on questions of IT. Shortly before his death he completed a paper on the Future of Mathematics Education in South Africa. The Department of Education was hoping they could employ him to continue this work. But this was not to be. Derrick’s death is a sad loss to SANTED, to the educational community and to the country.

There were many sides to Derrick besides his professional life. He was a keen runner and had completed the gruelling Comrades race between Durban and Pietermaritzburg six times in recent years. Generous-spirited and warm-hearted, he had a great sense of fun and was immensely popular among all who knew him. His sense of humour was legendary and he loved to spoil others with special treats and surprises. And he was probably one of the few people in the world with the strange habit of drinking beer and red wine in conjunction. Greatly respected and loved, he is sorely missed in the SANTED office and by everyone associated with him through SANTED projects.